Commander Vargus Meets His Maker
by spikala
Summary: Commander Vargus and his squad find themselves on yet another backwater planet, but something funny is going on. Crackfic vignette.


_A/N: The basic idea for this fic comes from Jade_Max's story, "Leprechaun Magic"; it's a self-realisation challenge to acknowledge the little idiosyncrasies that creep into every writer's stories, and have the characters realise they're in your fic._

_Just a quick warning—this isn't a terribly serious fic, so take it with a grain of salt._

* * *

Commander Vargus Meets His Maker

.

In the distant future, in a galaxy far, far away, in an otherwise tranquil city, in one of the rougher areas of town, plans were being hatched.

The Mastermind turned to her fellow compatriots to show off her work. "So what do you think?"

The shorter of the conspirators came over. "Looks good. I think you could up the casualties," he said. "But I like the idea."

"I still don't understand why you don't want to include zombies," the other one said, peering over the Mastermind's shoulder at the plans on the screen. "Zombies make everything cooler."

She resisted the urge to roll her eyes. "I don't have the scientific know-how to make working zombies, or the time to do the research. Plus, having guns makes everything easier. And explosions. Explosions are always good."

There was a hum of agreement from the other plotters.

"Then it's settled," she continued. "It'll be this squad."

==o0o==

The sun shone down on an empty wasteland. Standing on the edge of a stone outcropping, gazing down at the desolate landscape was a squad of clone troopers, their armour shining white and orange against the grey-green rocks.

"Aw kriff," one of the orange clones said. "We're out in the arse end of nowhere again. And where the frak is our air support?"

"Stow it, Dom," Commander Vargus ordered. "It'll get here when it gets here. In the meantime, we need to secure the area."

"Yes, sir!" The two other orange clones leaped to attention and darted off, dragging a still grumbling Dom with them.

Vargus shook his head. Those three techs kept him on his toes constantly. One hundred and forty odd men under his command and they didn't make as much trouble as three bomb techs. He gazed across the rocky plain below them, and his confusion grew. Why were they even here? Something niggled at the edges of his mind, but he brushed it aside. He had orders to be here. Yeah, that was right, orders.

"Something on your mind, commander?" the ARF trooper at his side asked.

"Nothing much," Vargus said, the niggling getting worse. "Just wondering why we're out here when there are no Separatists, no Mandalorians, and no explosives for the bomb squad to take care of."

"Maybe we're being too efficient for our own good," Falco suggested. "High Command decided to give the rest of the army a chance at the action, so we got sent to this lovely spa of a planet to cool our heels."

"That's probably it," Vargus agreed, relieved that Falco had an explanation that soothed the disquiet curling up his spine.

Falco was looking around, his visor swinging to and fro. "Then why send just the five of us, and not the rest of the company?" he muttered.

Vargus tried to scratch his head, belatedly realising he had his helmet on. "It does seem a bit odd," he admitted finally.

"And since when does banter happen between a commanding officer and his subordinate-who-isn't-his-subordinate because-he's-just-been-assigned-for-the-mission?" Falco continued.

Vargus took a seat on a rock that he could've sworn wasn't there a moment ago. All his instincts were screaming at him, and he hadn't gotten to the rank of commander without paying attention to them. After all, they saved him and his men during the mission to Concordia. "I'm telling you, Falco," he said. "There's something funny going on around here."

There was a pause. "Did you just quote from a Disney movie?" Falco asked.

"What?"

"Sir, I'm fairly sure you just quoted the Sheriff of Nottingham."

Falco was talking gibberish now. Vargus wondered if maybe the scout was cracking up. His senses were screaming _danger_, and Falco was nitpicking at nonsense. "What's Nottingham or Disney?"

"Aw kriff!" Falco stripped off his helmet and flung it aside.

Vargus leapt to his feet to grab the helmet, but it went skittering off the lip of the cliff and went crashing to the rocks below. Funny, he could've sworn that they were just on a small hillock of stone earlier, not a cliff. It was further down than he remembered. He turned on the other man. "Trooper, explain yourself!"

"You can just frak off!" Falco was shouting up at the sky, not paying any attention to Vargus. "Put us back where we belong and sod off!" His face was bright red.

"Falco!" Vargus bellowed at the top of his lungs. It did the trick, Falco stopped shouting and looked at him. "What in the nine hells of Corellia is with you?"

Falco looked downcast now, his earlier anger having ebbed away. "I'm so sorry, commander," he said. "But we're in a spikala story."

"A who-da-whadda?"

"We're in a story, sir, worse, we're in one of _her_ stories. Bad things are going to start happening. We should get ready, any moment now we're going to be ambushed," Falco said. He was methodically checking and rechecking his decee's charge. "If we were in a laloga story, we should be expecting a wonderfully well-rounded woman would cross our path and one of us would slowly but surely fall in love with her. Right now, I'd even take being in Jade Max story. At least there, Ahsoka and Captain Rex would dash out and save us."

The scout was starting to babble now. Vargus was still trying to wrap his brain around Falco's extraordinary statement that they were inside a story. "We can't be inside a story. We're not characters, Falco. I'm a real person. I remember being issued my armour, I remember you, and the mission to Concordia."

"What about the rest of your company?" Falco prodded. "Do you remember them? What was the mission that put us here? Can you remember why are there no larties? And why haven't the others checked in like regs say they should?"

Vargus struggled against Falco's words. "I can't be expected to remember all one hundred and forty men! And the larty pilot dropped us out here to investigate a mysterious power signature."

Falco rolled his eyes. "That explanation has been used a gazillion times in Stargate SG1. I'm telling you, sir, we're in a spikala story. There's only a handful of us when military sense would dictate twice that many men for a mission like this, there are sneaky nods and shoutouts to other stories scattered around the place, we're bantering like crazy, Jedi don't exist, and there are holes everywhere. Behind you!"

Vargus whirled, decee at the ready, only to encounter a flat blue screen where there should be an endless vista of grey-green. "What the..." He took a step closer, only to see the blue ripple and fade away to the expected view of rocky wastes.

"See!" Falco jabbed a finger at the new view. "She hadn't bothered about that because neither of us were looking that way. You made her add it in just now. And I bet that somewhere off-screen where we can't see it, our enemies are busy plotting against us using only the vaguest of terms to hype up the suspense, because that's the type of stunt she'd pull."

Vargus realised his hands were shaking slightly. They were so far out of his comfort zone that he might as well be in a different galaxy. His HUD said that the air was safe, no hallucinogens or mind-controlling gases present; nothing to explain Falco's behaviour. Part of him desperately wanted to just write Falco off as having snapped, but snatches of Falco's arguments had sunk in and made sense. There was just too much about this place that was strange. And where had the bomb techs gotten to?

"All clear, sir!" Dom had reappeared from nowhere as if by magic, Tari and Ren beside him looking like orange dopplegangers.

Falco's eyes narrowed. "Are you _positive_ that there is no chance of any enemies being nearby, trooper?"

"Affirmative. The perimeter is secure."

Falco didn't look convinced. "You didn't see any mysterious holes, ignore any trails, kick any rocks, or see any bones?"

"Negative." Dom sounded puzzled by Falco's hostility. He looked at Vargus. "Is there something I'm not aware of, sir?"

Vargus resisted the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose. "Falco thinks we're in a spiker story."

"Spike-_ala_," Falco corrected. "Quick, without thinking too much, tell me what you saw when you were out there."

"Rocks," Tari said promptly.

"What type? Colour? Lay of the land?" Falco pressed.

Tari hesitated and Falco pounced. "See? You aren't sure. Not without thinking in more detail."

"Are you sure that Falco hasn't just lost it, sir?" Dom asked Vargus.

Trust Dom to be the blunt one. "Not so far as I can tell, trooper," Vargus said. "He does make a point. I completely forgot about you three until you reappeared. _Can_you remember what happened during your recon?"

"Not exactly," Dom admitted. "If I focus, I think I could remember, but right now my memory is fuzzy from when I left you until when we came back."

"So what's the plan now?" Ren asked. "A storyteller isn't something we can really fight against. Not unless our blaster bolts manage to make it from us to her."

Vargus squashed his fear and unease. Regardless of what Falco said, he was a commander and he was damn well going to act like one. That meant holding it together for his men, holding everyone together, and making a plan. "Falco," he said. "You seem to have the most intel on this 'spikala', it looks like we could use a briefing. Gentlemen, pull up a rock."

The bomb squad looked around. "What rocks?" Tari asked, puzzled.

Vargus stared. Where there had been clusters of boulders before, now they were on an empty windswept hilltop. "I could've sworn…" he trailed off. Around him, the bomb squad sat down in the dirt.

Falco put a hand on his shoulder. "Don't worry, commander. I saw them too. I think she's worked out we're onto her."

==o0o==

In the room far away and in the future, the number of conspirators had increased by one. Luckily for the hapless squad of clones, the focus had shifted from them to more immediate matters.

"Go check the oven," said Pro-Casualties. "I think that was the buzzer I heard."

"Crud," the Mastermind said.

A few moments later, she was back with a tray laden with garlic bread, wontons, and Pro-Zombie's bacon-wrapped date morsels. All good brain food to complement the chocolates and lollies that were heaped in the middle of the coffee table. Fuel of writing champions.

"Mmm, these are pretty good," Hobbit said, savouring one of the bacon-dates. She licked her fingers.

"Of course. Bacon makes everything better," Pro-Zombie said.

Then Mastermind glanced at her laptop screen. "Uh oh. Guys, I've got an emergency here—my characters are starting to do their own thing, and worse—they've worked out that I'm pulling the strings."

Everyone clustered around the errant story, lunch abandoned in the face of Mastermind's crisis.

"Well damn," Pro-Casualty said. "You might just have to kill them all off."

"I'd feel a bit bad about that," Mastermind said. "But I guess I can't really let them interact with the rest of my stories now, news might spread and I need that fourth wall intact."

"No chance of throwing in some giant eagles to fly in and save the day?" Hobbit suggested.

"I think that only works in Lord of the Rings," Mastermind said. "Only one thing for it—they all have to die."

==o0o==

On the mesa in the distant past and far away, there was instant uproar:

"Die? What!"

"No! I haven't fed my pet mutt today! I can't die!"

"You can't kill me off, who's going to water the plants back at base?"

Vargus blinked. "Wait, wait. Since when did you have a mutt, Tari? Or for that matter, when did we start having plants in the barracks, Dom?"

There was a blast of light. Vargus's visor darkened automatically to compensate, and after a second of blinking madly, he saw that there was a crack in the dark skies above. Where before he had a vague memory of dark starry skies (now he was suspicious—was this actually a memory, or one that this mysterious spikala had belatedly put into his head?) there was a jagged line running through the sky.

"Oi!" Falco was on his feet, shouting at the sky. "You stole that from Doctor Who!"

"Shut _up_, Falco!" a disembodied voice came from above. "You weren't supposed to hear that. Now you've gone and ruined everything!"

Light streamed down from the skies in a brilliant ribbon, swirling and coalescing into a blob that hovered in front of the wary clones. After a moment, Vargus realised that the blob was shifting, changing into a humanoid shape. Arms, legs, head; all check. The light-person sat down on one of the boulders (which had apparently decided to reappear) and put its head in its hands.

"Why couldn't you just cooperate?" it asked. "I had a brilliant plan for an action scene; lots of shouting, guns blazing, and slime monsters from the void. I'm good writing at those, y'know," it continued, "it would've been such a great scene. Action, tension, life and death peril, the whole shebang."

Vargus stood his ground. "Identify yourself!"

The light-person lifted its head. "Who do you think it is?" It definitely sounded female and very frustrated. "I'm spikala, I created this place." It, _she_, waved her an arm, gesturing around them. "And you've gone and messed it all up. All I wanted to do was write a quick ficlet with you guys to get out of my current funk and finish my other stories, but now…"

Vargus felt inexplicably guilty as spikala buried her face in her hands again and began to sniffle in earnest. He held his ground though. "With all due respect, ma'am, you were going to kill us all."

She looked up at him. "No I wasn't."

"We kriffing well heard you!" Dom exploded. He and the other clones had been watching the interchange between spikala and their commander with wary interest. Vargus noted with pride, that they all had their weapons ready to target their guest at a moment's notice.

"I'm terrible at killing off characters," she confessed. "Especially not ones that I've gotten to know. I feel guilty for weeks afterwards. Plus, you guys are sort of canon. I can't kill you off without risking the chance of a canon trainsmash if more EU material comes out."

That last bit made no sense whatsoever to Vargus. What artillery pieces had to do with their situation was moot. "So now what?" he prompted.

"Any chance of some romance in the not-so-distant future?" Tari asked hopefully.

Falco snorted. "Good luck with that. Our chances of a happily ever after are slim to none. Plus she's never come up with a romance yet."

"I'm working on it!" spikala retorted. Then she rested her head in her hands again. "Not that it's going to matter anyway. At this rate, I'll never manage to finish anything. The stories will just wither."

She sounded so forlorn that Vargus had to resist the urge to comfort her. At this point, this female was still their enemy and Falco's comment about the happily ever after hadn't done much to change his mind.

"There are other stories?" Dom said.

"Yeah," she said. "Eight and counting. Mostly about clones, but there's a couple that having Kaminoans too. One's a collab fic so I feel awful about not getting more done on that one. None of them are cooperating though. It's like my muse has just gone AWOL."

Finally, a term Vargus understood! He struggled against sympathy. Their erstwhile visitor seemed to be getting through to the younger clones though. Tari tugged off his helmet and came to sit in front of spikala.

"Any with us in it?" the young bomb tech asked.

"No, sorry," she said. "I wasn't expecting to see you guys again."

"So what happens to us once the story ends then?" Tari asked.

She shrugged. "I don't know. Perhaps you go back inside my mental cupboard. Maybe you just get put on hold, or maybe you just fade. I've never really thought about it." Her mood seemed to take another turn towards bleakness. "I guess I'll have to worry about it more, now that all my characters are headed that way."

"How many?"

Ren had been so quiet, his DC-17 pistol trained on spikala this whole time, that Vargus had half-forgotten him.

Apparently, so had spikala. "Huh?"

"How many other characters will cease to be if the stories stop?" Ren asked.

There was a long pause. Spikala started counting on her fingers, muttering to herself. "If I only count OC's… About ten, but a lot of the stories use canon characters. My version of them will never have existed."

It sounded pretty dire to Vargus. Falco and the others seemed equally grim. Ten lives, plus all the canon characters, were at stake. "Is there anything that we could do?"

She shook her head. "Not unless you're any good at rounding up errant plot bunnies, forcing non-existent muses to pull their weight, and chivvying characters into action."

Falco drew himself up to his full height. "Miss, we're clone troopers. We can do _anything_."

Vargus nodded. "He's right. Just point us in the right direction, and we'll take it from there."

She looked up at Vargus and his squad where they stood in front of her, a solid wall of plastoid, determined and ready to do their duty, to save fellow clones from oblivion. "Oh wow, you're really serious aren't you?" No one answered and she seemed to pull herself together. "Of course you are, that's just what you would do."

She pointed to a nearby boulder and light coalesced into a handful of datachips and a tiny square device. "Slot the datachips into your armour, they'll make sure you don't get sucked into the storyline and that the characters can't see you," she explained. "That device—" she pointed at the box that Vargus was turning over in his palms "—is a boom box. And yes, Falco, I'm aware that I'm nicking the idea from Justice League."

Falco's mouth snapped shut.

"What does it do?" Vargus asked.

"It'll get you from one story to another," she said. "Seeing as Falco is the most genre-savvy and aware of you, he should know how it works."

"Falco?" Vargus handed over the boom-box. "Is she right?"

"Yes, commander. I remember how it works, you just…" Falco pushed a button and with a clap of thunder, a tunnel of light appeared in front of them, the ramp sloping up into nothingness.

Vargus checked his decee. "Alright, boys, buckets on. Time to move out."

"Er, commander…" Falco sounded sheepish.

Ah, that's right, Falco's ARF helmet had gone sailing off the cliff earlier. Vargus cleared his throat, about to say something when spikala interrupted.

"I think I can help you with that. It's the least I can do." She snapped her fingers.

Vargus looked around, but nothing was different. Falco was still helmetless.

"Shoot. That never works," she muttered. "And it's just not the same without the sound effect."

Light flashed, and Falco's helmet appeared at his feet. Falco picked it up and inspected it. "Just like the old one," he announced, looking a bit awed at this display of power.

"Let's move," Vargus said.

One by one, the others filed past him and up the light ramp. Then it was his turn.

"Commander," spikala said. "Thank you. Really."

"Just doing my job." He nodded in farewell. "If you'll excuse me, I've got stories to marshal. Best of luck to you, miss."

She watched them go, heard the boom as the tube disappeared, carrying Commander Vargus and his team off to who knew where. Around her, everything rippled into blue, rocks and stars fading away to whatever place things go when the story no longer needs them. The lethargy of the past few months was still there, but it was no longer quite so bone sapping. She had a squad of clone troopers on her side now, to help her in the fight to finish the stories.

"God speed, commander," she said. "And thank you."

.

Fin

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_A/N: This piece was written at my local writing group's write-in as a way to clear out some story cobwebs and kickstart my creativity again. Vargus and his crew sort of volunteered themselves to help sort out my motivational problem. Having a group of troopers running around with a carte blanche to do whatever it takes to keep the stories rolling seems to have worked though - I'm writing stories again! :D_


End file.
